Love Letters
by ophelia-complex
Summary: Complete in 3 chapters. A series of letters between different couples explore the different reactions to a Marriage Law. Any feedback appreciated.
1. Despair

AN: This is the first of three letters from different characters from the HP books, each exploring the effects of a Marriage Law (I'm assuming by now you all know the constraints of the Marriage Law, if not, where the hell have you been?). The letters are each from one of a couple to the other, I had specific ones in mind but I haven't named them, just apply them to whoever seems right to you.

Disclaimer: Tragically I don't own Harry Potter. More tragically, I don't own Professor Snape either =[

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Part One.

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"Do you remember those faraway days when we first loved? They were our days in the sun, we were but children - two dancing sunbeams on the water. We thought we knew then what love was but that was before the world splintered. The only way to appreciate the depth of a sea is to drown in it, and we swam so far out, but always returned to the sand and the spray.  
"The world has changed. The waters are choppy and I am drowning. The Ministry thinks they can take me, lay me out on the sand and sell me on, good as new. Soon I shall be sent to the cattle market, to be bidded on and bargained for by everyone that ticks the right boxes - but no ticky-boxes can encompass true love. You won't be there, you won't be allowed, because love is nothing when Muggle Intergration is key.  
"I will not allow myself to be dessicated like a sponge, cast upon the shore. I could not betray either of us like that. I can feel them coming for me, steaming over the horizon, but they will not find me. I will dive deep to the uncharted depths of our ocean, live forever in that last dizzying moment where our love fills my lungs like saltwater. Deep, deep, amongst the sand and the pearls I will wait for you.  
"Goodbye, always.  
x" 


	2. Liberation

AN: This is the second of three letters from different characters from the HP books, each exploring the effects of a Marriage Law (I'm assuming by now you all know the constraints of the Marriage Law, if not, where the hell have you been?). The letters are each from one of a couple to the other, I had specific ones in mind but I haven't named them, just apply them to whoever seems right to you.

Disclaimer: Tragically I don't own Harry Potter. More tragically, I don't own Professor Snape either =[

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Part Two.

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"This single scrap of paper, my love, could hold the answer to all our anguish. We must tread carefully, but if we succeed - and why should we not, we tick all the boxes - we might just pull it off.  
"We'd be the couple on the Ministry's posters - brought together by the forge of this law and finding 'unexpected' happiness. Our reputations are known by all - our history by none. All those years we dreamed of a place to run away to, where we could love. Maybe we don't have to. "Even They'd never dare stop us with the Ministry behind us.  
"Will you marry me?" 


	3. Bittersweet

AN: This is the final of three letters from different characters from the HP books, each exploring the effects of a Marriage Law (I'm assuming by now you all know the constraints of the Marriage Law, if not, where the hell have you been?). The letters are each from one of a couple to the other, I had specific ones in mind but I haven't named them, just apply them to whoever seems right to you.

This is the last piece, interested what you think. Especially, who do you think the letters were between, in what circumstances? I'd love to know.

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Disclaimer: Tragically I don't own Harry Potter. More tragically, I don't own Professor Snape either =[

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Part Three.

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"It has been many years since we last spoke, but I hope you are well - I hear so little news from my old friends now. I've built up a little bubble of home for myself and my little girl, and we get by as well as any. Some might call it a lonely life, amongst the muggles but not of them, but I have seen fear and pain and terrible loss, and they were worse than the hardest of my years away. There is a tranquility here, from which I could never return to the Wizarding world. Not after what they did to us, to you, to our whole community.  
"Like you, I am a parent now, though unlike you not by design. I was left the orphaned baby daughter of a friend, Harriet Jade. She is almost nine and has never given a hint of magic. I do not pity her - the ways of the world I left behind all those years ago are far from the ways I would wish her to tread. "You may be wondering, Why now of all times? Why, when our lives are moulded, for good or ill, do I choose to stir the ashes of an old love? I am not lonely in middle age - I have my Hattie and my home, you have your Wife, your children. You have grown to love them, as I have grown apart. We are happy now, though we were not then. "No, what I am begging you for is to remember me. You are a powerful man now, I know that much, with a Ministry, privilege, influence. I am begging you that when your time of testing comes, as it surely will, you do not do what was done to us. From your high seat, it would be easy to look back on the Marriage Law as a success - after all, the Wizarding world survived, prospered - and we are all happy, aren't we? You could easily forget the value of what we once had.  
"My little girl won't be going to Hogwarts. She won't know of the complications of Wizard society and she won't be a victim if any of your policies reach too far, like they did in our day. But remember when the time comes to make tough decisions that the freedom you are sacrificing for the greater good was ours. Seperately, we've done fine in life. But together, we could have ruled the world." 


End file.
